


so tenderly you watch me burn

by Windybird



Category: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bisexuality, Childhood Trauma, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Escapism, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mommy Issues, Multi, Plato Lives, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Road Trips, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexuality Crisis, Suicidal Thoughts, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:14:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windybird/pseuds/Windybird
Summary: "I'm leaving," Plato says, his voice as unfamiliar as a stranger's. "I don't know where, and I don't care, as long as it's far away from here."Jim and Judy exchange a glance. There's still a little lipstick smudged at the corner of Jim's mouth, and Plato wants to tell him, but the words die on his tongue when he sees the expression on his face."We're coming with you," He says, tone allowing no room for refutations or protests. Plato's mouth open and closes like a fish, and he has to make an effort to clamp his jaw shut."We are," Judy agrees, face screwed tight with determination. "We won't let you go by yourself, Plato."He looks into both of their faces, and he's not sure which of them he wants to kiss more in that moment. Both of them, he guesses. He wants to separate himself into two beings so that he can kiss both of them at the same time."Okay," Plato says finally, when he realizes they're waiting for a response. "Okay."
Relationships: John "Plato" Crawford/Jim Stark, John "Plato" Crawford/Judy/Jim Stark, Judy (Rebel Without a Cause)/Jim Stark
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	so tenderly you watch me burn

**Author's Note:**

> every time we go to Griffith observatory I always think abt this movie and how unfair it is that the best character in the entirety of 1950s cinema died so terribly, so this is my attempt to rectify that + plato's unresolved relationships w/ jim and judy ft. sexual tension in the form of a cross-country road trip concocted solely out of the desire to run from ur issues!!

It’s easy to love him.

It’s an innate quality, Plato thinks. Something that can’t be defined in Jim's squinty-eyed smile, in the way he almost lights his cigarette filter instead of the tip when he gets nervous, but it is most certainly there. Judy can see it too, Plato thinks. She has some echo of that quality, but it’s different in her- it’s more blurred, it’s harder to see when she’s with “the kids” as she calls them (“the menaces,” Plato muses quietly to himself), but it’s indisputably there. And then there’s him, and he just-

He just-

Well, he shot puppies. That sounds bad enough on its own, doesn’t it? Not even loveable Jim Stark would be so lovable if he shot a bunch of poor, defenseless puppies with his mother’s gun. When they asked Plato why he did it, down at the police station, his mind kept up a steady, noisy hum of white sound. He didn’t know how to explain to them that the mother stopped nursing them a few days before, and that they were suffering because of it, and all he could think about was how his own mother refused to nurse him past six months- and look how well that turned out, after all-, and so it was better, in the end, for them to be killed. For them to be dead and safe rather than wishing with all their hearts for a quality they simply did not have, and the lack of which that the people that were supposed to love them despite it all found unforgivable.

Instead of asking him why he shot those puppies, Plato thinks, they should’ve asked him why he didn’t shoot himself instead. Because at least then he would’ve had a good, solid answer for them- he was afraid. He was as afraid of death as much as Jim was unafraid of anything, and that already said a lot.

But it turns out, in the end, that he wasn’t actually forced to face his fear. Whatever cop shot him did that for him, and now he’s bleeding out in the back of an ambulance, Dinah crying over him, and all he can think about is the nameless quality of Jim’s smile, or in the way that Judy ran her fingers through his hair. He thinks, right as he loses consciousness, that it might not be nameless at all- that it might, in fact, be attraction, but then everything loses its edges, and he’s floating underwater, like they finally filled the pool at that decrepit old mansion on top of the hill.

* * *

When he wakes up, Jim is dozing off on the chair nearby. Dazing against his knee on the ottoman is Judy, her usual elegant coif mussed up and matted with tangles. Plato stares at them for a few moments before he rubs his eyes. When they’re still there afterwards, he tentatively allows himself to believe that he’s still alive, and that they’re not just a figment of his imagination, though he still doesn’t understand why they’re there. He nearly got Jim killed, after all- probably traumatized Judy for life, at that. The most he was expecting was Dinah, and he notes from the tenderly written note on the end table beside his cot that she’s gone out in search of a telephone to inform his mother about what happened.

As Plato winces at the thought of his mother’s reaction, Jim awakens with a start. His eyes land on Plato instantly, grimacing and glum-faced.

“You okay? The stitches didn’t come out, did they?” He demands, and the hoarse sound of his voice wakes Judy up, yawning with a crack of her jaw as she lifts her head from Jim’s knee.

“Did his stitches come out?” She asks in alarm, once her brain has caught up to the rest of her. Plato hurries to explain himself.

“I’m fine,” he assures them, before their words start to sink in. “Wait, wait- stitches? What stitches?”

“You took a rough hit there,” Jim says in a low voice, pointing to his abdomen. “Bullet straight through the gut. We thought you were-“

“We thought you were dead at first,” Judy interrupts, with a nervous tremor in her voice. “But you weren’t, thank God. You just lost a lot of blood- and you got about ten stitches. They didn’t even numb the area, you were just out cold.”

Plato shivers against his will. Something indecipherable flickers in Jim’s eyes.

“I’d offer you my jacket,” he says, his voice half-ironical, half-deadly serious, “But the doc put it in a bag with the rest of your clothing. Why did you have to go and do a thing like that, Plato? That stunt at the observatory- it could’ve gotten you killed.”

Plato doesn’t know how to respond to that. He’s only just now noticing the flimsy patient gown sticking to his sweaty skin, and below that, the jagged edges of the stitches Judy had mentioned getting caught on the fabric.

“I should’ve,” He says quietly. “You two nearly got killed because of me. You shouldn’t even be here. You-“

“Shush,” Judy says, her expression fierce, her voice impassioned. “That’s not true. You were just scared, you were- you were panicking. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Shooting at a cop and a kid is,” Plato says glumly, before the reality of the situation finally sets in. Bolting upright in his bed, he stares at them with wild eyes. “Did I kill anyone last night?”

“Crunch is no worse for wear,” Judy tells him, her doe-like brown eyes clouding over in anger. “And believe me, he deserves whatever pain he’s in right now. The cop’s okay, too- you barely even grazed him.”

Plato laughs a dry, humorless laugh just as the doctor bustles in, Dinah on his heels.

“Mr. Crawford,” says the former in a deep, gravelly voice. “How are we feeling today?”

“Like I’ve just been shot in the gut,” Plato says, and then blinks at his own daring while Jim huffs out an incredulous laugh beside him. Dinah’s face hardens. The pinched, upset look she’s wearing is all Plato’s doing, he knows, and the thought makes him feel guilty enough to send rivets of sweat down his forehead.

“That ain’t funny, John,” she chastises. “What you put me through- what you put your _mother_ through-“

Plato stiffens instantly. Jim and Judy share a look over his head, but he ignores them as he leans closer to Dinah.

“My mother?” He repeats, in a faint sort of voice. And then, not daring to believe it: “She’s coming back?”

The hard look instantly dissipates from Dinah’s face, but Plato can guess why easily enough. The disappointment is a hard, unyielding lump in his throat, though, even as she shakes her head sadly.

“There’s a wicked snowstorm in Chicago right now, John. She’s not going to be able to make it back in time for your recovery. I’m sorry.”

“It figures,” Plato says, more bitterly than he would’ve thought he could muster. “She doesn’t want to see her future jailbird son, is that it?”

“Don’t say things like that, John!” is Dinah’s almost immediate admonishment. “You ain’t going to jail, and that’s that. That boy you shot at won’t be pressing charges- his father’s angry enough at him as it is-, and we can tell those police officers we’ll send you to one of them shrinks. That’ll keep them off your back, now, won’t it?”

The room descends into an uncomfortable silence. The doctor finally breaks it by coughing delicately behind Dinah.

“Let me check your vitals, Mr. Crawford, and we can move forward from here.”

Well, he checks his vitals, all right, and aside from the very obvious fact that Plato was shot in the gut last night, he’s been stabilized and doing fairly well, all things considered. The doctor blithely informs him that, regardless, he’ll be in the hospital for another week or two. Like it matters to him whether he stays there for the rest of his life, let alone two weeks. He can’t summon up the energy to care much about anything anymore- not even to internally leap for joy when Jim leans over and brushes the hair away from his forehead before he leaves, or when Judy bends down to kiss his cheek, and leaves the skin there tingly and flushed.

He gets out after a week and four days, and throughout that time he doesn’t receive a single letter from either his mother or his father asking about his health. Though Dinah tries to help matters, the concerned glances she gives him in the rearview mirror during the drive home isn’t as soothing as she thinks. At home, he brushes off her attempts to get some food into him and goes straight to his room, pushing a chair against the door behind him for good measure.

Then, without fanfare or dramatics, he sinks to the ground in a fetal position and begins to sob. Quietly, of course- God knows that Dinah’s got ears that can hear through walls-, but forcefully enough that he feels his whole body shake with the intensity of it, enough so that he’s worried, in a rare moment of lucidity, that he’ll rip open his stitches by the sheer violence of it.

He wishes he still had his mother's gun with him, but it's been confiscated by the police, and he's pretty sure the slamming of kitchen drawers downstairs means that Dinah's attempting to install locks on them- at least the one holding all the knives. More than that, he wishes that the cop who shot him had been successful, that his bullet had struck true and lodged itself deep in Plato's insides, so deep that nobody could possibly fish it out and patch him up again. He wishes that, even after everything, all he's been through and witnessed and endured, he could stop thinking about Jim and Judy tucked away in one of the bedrooms of the mansion, warm and cozy cuddling up to each other as Plato laid shivering in the cold downstairs, abandoned by his friends who weren't really his friends, who only allowed him to call them friends out of pity. Or fear. 

He sobs harder at that, deep and keening and so loud that he hears Dinah pause in her ministrations downstairs. Then there's the telltale sound of her footsteps on the staircase- the footsteps he's heard every single day of his life since he was seven years old-, and then his door opens and she's gasping his name, kneeling beside him on the ground to gather him up in her arms and herd him onto the bed. 

"Oh, John," She whispers, her voice impossibly sad ( _because of you,_ whispers a tiny voice in the back of his head. _Because of what you've done)._ "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, baby." 

He says nothing but clings to her, unable to do anything else as the broiling storm rides out inside his body, scorching his insides as he shivers and shakes like there's something inside his skin, attempting to claw its way out. Dinah holds him through it all, murmuring soothing, nonsensical things under her breath as she rocks Plato back and forth, back and forth, like a baby, and he wishes, with a ferocity that frightens him, that it could always be just him and Dinah. Forget about his mother, or his father, or the puppies, or his classmates, or even lovable Jim Stark and Judy. What he feels for them- for all of them- is complex and frightening, but what he feels for Dinah has always been crystal-cut. Nothing in his life has ever been simple, and perhaps that's why he allows her to carry on rocking, his cheek pressed against her chest as she runs a hand down his hair, the gesture so simple and sweet that Plato feels another hot gush of tears rush to his eyes. 

Because he knows, he _knows_ what he has to do. He has to leave this house- leave Dinah- leave California entirely, get as far away from here as he possibly can. Where he can never hurt anybody or be hurt by anybody ever again. He'll live in the woods, maybe, become a park ranger or fire-watcher or something, so far away from everybody he knows that it'll be as though he never met them at all, that they were a mere dream he had one long, lonesome night. And he'll never be loved like this again- so simply, so purely- if he leaves, not for the rest of his life, but it's a sacrifice worth making if it means that Dinah will never suffer because of him again. She's done enough of that for one lifetime.

"Dinah," He whispers, after what might've been fifteen minutes or an hour of periodical rocking and shushing. "Dinah, it's okay. I'm okay."

She cups the side of his face, gently wiping away the tear tracks on his cheeks. 

"I felt so helpless, John," She whispers back, and the shame in his throat threatens to choke him when he realizes there are unshed tears glimmering in her eyes as she looks down into his face. "Seeing you laying on the floor like that, like a broken toy- oh, please, John, please don't do that to me again. My heart won't be able to take it."

"I won't," Plato murmurs, watching the tears brim over and fall down her cheeks in abandon. "I won't, Dinah. I promise."

She reluctantly leaves the room after he points out that it's half past eleven, but he sits by himself and forces himself to wait as he listens to her getting ready for bed. Even after she's finished and the soft sound of her snores fills the corridor outside his room, he gives himself another ten minutes before he begins to pack his things. Shirts and slacks are thrown haphazardly into the one rucksack he's bringing with him to wherever he goes, underwear and toothbrush and comb stuffed at the very bottom of the pack so he can bring the stuff that actually matters. His journal, for one. The picture of Alan Ladd he'd brought home with him from school. His phonebook, which he makes the impulsive decision to look through, see all the names of everyone he's leaving behind. 

There aren't many names, but then his eyes land on Jim's- address written in a painfully careful hand-, and he makes a split second decision. He stuffs the phonebook in his rucksack, grabs Jim's stained jacket he'd received upon his discharge at the hospital, and looks around his room one last time before firmly shutting the door behind him, tiptoeing down the hall past Dinah's room though he knows well enough that she could sleep through a number of earthquakes and not move an inch. He forces down the temptation to sneak into her room and look at her one last time, memorizing every feature of her worn, beloved face, knowing that if he did so, he'd abandon his plan entirely. Instead he whispers goodbye to her closed door, and when he hears the sound of bedsprings moving, quickly makes his way down the stairs and out the door.

And then he begins to run.

He doesn't plan on it- he was planning on bringing his scooter with him, which, while not much of a rung above walking, is still a rung above walking-, but then his feet suddenly, rhythmically slap the pavement in front of him and he's running faster than he's ever run in his entire life, the sound of his footsteps ringing in the relative silence of the suburbia, and though he knows he's never going to see this place again it's almost as though it's transformed entirely, the ugly beige houses blurring together into something indefinable and gorgeous as he takes off down the street, sprinting in his black slacks and his dress shoes like the devil's on his heels. 

He runs so hard and so fast and for so long that he almost forgets where he's heading until he winds up at Jim's front door, breathing harder than he ever had for Mr. Gilmore's physical education class. There's a light on upstairs in Jim's room. Without knocking, he tries the knob, frowning when it doesn't jostle. He scans the porch and grins triumphantly when he sees the potted plant a few feet away from the door. Picking it up reveals the key beneath, and the door opens easily enough when he gently eases the key through the lock. Quietly as he can, he slips inside the house and climbs up the stairs to Jim's room, wincing with every creak that emits from the floorboards as he grabs the bannister for support. 

Jim and Judy immediately spring apart when he walks in, faces and body language guilty as anything, but he barely notices as he stands in front of them, shaking with adrenaline, panting hard, hands clenching and unclenching into fists at his sides as he stares at them.

"I'm leaving," Plato says, his voice as unfamiliar as a stranger's. "I don't know where, and I don't care, as long as it's far away from here."

Jim and Judy exchange a glance. There's still a little lipstick smudged at the corner of Jim's mouth, and Plato wants to tell him, but the words die on his tongue when he sees the expression on his face.

"We're coming with you," He says, tone allowing no room for refutations or protests. Plato's mouth open and closes like a fish, and he has to make an effort to clamp his jaw shut. 

"We are," Judy agrees, face screwed tight with determination. "We won't let you go by yourself, Plato."

He looks into both of their faces, and he's not sure which of them he wants to kiss more in that moment. Both of them, he guesses. He wants to separate himself into two beings so that he can kiss both of them at the same time. 

"Okay," Plato says finally, when he realizes they're waiting for a response. "Okay." 

And that's the end of that discussion. Jim moves into action, grabbing his bag off the floor and stuffing whatever he finds inside his dresser inside as Plato and Judy watch in silence, attempting to shove it all down as he forces down the top of bag with both hands. It ends up overfilling anyway, but he impatiently leaves the rest of the clothing on the floor as he grabs his wallet and shoes. He looks around on the floor for something, but it's only when Plato quietly approaches him that he pauses.

"Here," says Plato, holding out the jacket in front of him. It's still stained with Plato's blood, no matter how hard he scrubbed at it, but the color's similar enough to the fabric that you could probably only see the stain if you were looking for it. "It looks better on you, anyway."

Jim's face splits into a smile as he takes the jacket from him, slipping it around his shoulders and through his arms like a second skin. 

"Well," Jim says, turning the collar up so high that it grazes the underside of his jaw, "We should get to Judy's and grab her things before we leave. And we need to-"

"Jim?" calls a voice from down the hallway, and all three of them freeze, staring at each other with wide eyes. "That you?"

"The window," Judy whispers urgently, grabbing onto Jim's sleeve. "We can climb down the lattice before your dad gets here."

And it's strange, Plato thinks as they do just that, that even as they hear Jim's father shout in dismay above them when he opens the door to Jim's room and finds it empty, his first response is to laugh, a sharp bark of relief and hysteria alike as they clamber into Jim's car. And even as Judy shushes him, and Jim hurriedly turns around to back out of the driveway, he can see the same hysterical mirth dancing in their eyes as they tear down the street, the sound of the engine revving like a gunshot in the night. 


End file.
